


if there's a shadow in me (the dark is a tidal wave inside of you)

by aghamora



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, s04e10: Everything We Did Was for Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 17:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13528833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: He’s restless, that first night he stays with her and every one that follows.Or, the aftermath of Michaela’s revelation in 4x10.





	if there's a shadow in me (the dark is a tidal wave inside of you)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Long Way Down' by Robert DeLong.

He’s restless, that first night he stays with her and every one that follows.

He can’t sleep, can’t force his brain to boot down, grant him some sort of reprieve from consciousness – however fleeting, even for an hour. It seems intent on keeping him awake, rather, tormenting him. It locks him up in the prison of his own mind and throws away the damn key, and he stares at the chipped paint on Laurel’s ceiling into the small hours of the morning as the shadows and streetlights dance around him, the city a hum beyond these four walls, Laurel’s breathing soft and steady beside him on the bed.

He listens to it almost obsessively, from his spot on the ground beside her, terrified that one night it’ll stop for no reason, that she’ll simply lose the will to keep living and fade away. She already is, he can see it, her son torn from her in a pool of blood and then torn from her again by her father, that mob of scrubs and rubber gloves hustling him off to God knows where.

He listens to her breathing for hours. Clings to that sound with abnormal desperation. He was the reason it’d nearly stopped, ten floors up in that elevator. She would’ve died alone, terrified and screaming. They both would have.

It would’ve been his fault. It _was_.

He tries to beat the thought back, but it spreads like an infection, beginning in his head until it’s burning in his blood, spreading to every part of him, eating him hollow from the inside out, all the way down to his marrow until he feels like some partially decomposed corpse. He can’t sleep, hardly wants to eat. He puts up a decent enough front for Laurel’s sake, for the first few days, but it’s slipping faster than he can keep it up, and there’s only so long you can keep plugging leaks with chewing gum and duct tape before your entire damn ship capsizes in on itself.

He loves her. He loves her so much he doesn’t know what to do with what he feels, so much he can hardly breathe for it sometimes. He loves her and he’s so bad for her, and his love has never done any good for her. Never done anything but _hurt_ her. She deserves better than him, and he’s tried to _be_ better, tried to be good, but there’s no hiding the truth of what he is – because try, _try_ is fucking bullshit. He can _try_ all he goddamn pleases to be whatever he goddamn wants, try for some pipe dream of a white picket fence and a family with her, and it won’t make a single scrap of difference. At the core of him is this horribly rotten, poisonous, bloodthirsty thing; a curse. Like King Midas, if King Midas turned everything he touched to shit instead of gold.

He loves her. He loves her.

And he hurt her.

He ends up sitting at the desk, some nights, and this is one of them; he can’t stand to lie still any longer, staring up into the fuzzy grey darkness with only his thoughts to occupy him. He wants to pace, run, break free from this suffocating room where he can feel a ghost always looking over his shoulder, always lingering in his periphery. It’s haunted, this place, and he’s haunted enough already that it feels damn close to driving him insane, but moving to the desk instead of lying on his makeshift cot beside her bed helps, somehow. A change of scenery. He stares out the window, onto the fire escape, and now and then his eyes drift over to Laurel.

She’s curled up on her side, now, and she’s asleep in the literal sense but he knows, somehow, that she isn’t at rest.

She’s been having nightmares. She doesn’t wake up screaming, and most times she doesn’t even wake with a visible start, but her brows furrow too often for her slumber to be peaceful, mouth tightened into a frown, body curling in on itself like it’s trying to retreat from something, _protect_ something inside of her. Sleep should be her one respite from all this and now it’s been turned into its own unique sort of hell too, the same way consciousness is for him.

“Frank?”

Her voice is soft, hoarse with sleep. It startles him out of his thoughts, and he turns his head to find Laurel sitting up in bed, half-cloaked in shadow and squinting over at him. He can’t tell what’d woken her; her own nightmares, or his thoughts, somehow, as deafening to her across the room as they are to him, rushing a mile a minute behind his eyes.

“What’re you doing up?” she asks, after a moment, and he lowers his eyes, clasping his hands in front of him.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

Vague enough. Laurel, of course, doesn’t leave it at that. “You haven’t been. For days. Why?”

She’s noticed. Of course she has. Laurel is nothing if not dangerously observant, and he knows he can’t hide from her now, no matter how badly he might want to.

He gives a weak shrug. “It’s nothin’.”

“It’s not nothing, Frank.”

His vision is choppy, all flickering and stuttered in his exhaustion, shadows elongating and distorting, stretching out across the floor. He blinks, and suddenly she’s crossed the room, coming to stand before him, clad in a pair of baggy sweatpants and a Middleton t-shirt he remembers she’d used to sleep in often. He thinks she looks about as tired as he is; she may not be sitting up at night for hours on end, but the nightmares have done a number on her anyway, her body broken, still weak and not seeming to regain much of its strength. They’re both barely holding themselves together. Barely alive. Dressed up corpses going through the motions of their days.

And then she’s kneeling down before him, in an attempt to get a better look at his face, and something roils in his stomach; a lurch of nausea, shame and self-loathing. To think of what he’d done to her. Everything he could still do. He can’t stand to have her so close, can’t look her in the eye, and he wants desperately to run, but he left her once and he can’t do that again, even if it would be for her own good.

Unless. Unless she gives him permission.

“What is it?” she asks, voice still quiet, undemanding. Her brows pull together in confusion. “Why won’t you look at me?”

There’s an aching lump like a ball of lead in his throat. He can’t speak, for the longest moment in the world. He can’t look at her. He doesn’t _deserve_ to look at her, unworthy, worthless scum that he is. Doesn’t deserve to look at her, or touch her, when all he’s ever done is destroy her.

Accident or not. His intentions don’t fucking make a difference. They didn’t the day he planted that bug in Annalise’s hotel room. They didn’t here, either. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and hell, Frank thinks, is precisely where they’ve wound up.

“I-” His voice gives out on the syllable. He gulps, eyes flicking up to look at her for one unbearable second, and this time his voice catches on a sob on the way out. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” she echoes, bewildered. “What’re you-”

She freezes, suddenly. Goes deathly still. Understanding bleeds into her eyes, gleaming bullet-sharp silver in the moonlight, followed quickly by something in the genre of concern – not for herself, but for _him_ , of all goddamn people.

“Michaela told you,” Laurel states, flatly, not a question. There’s no uncertainty about her.

She’s still looking at him, just _looking_ , without fear or anger or judgement. She looks so fucking calm and he doesn’t get it, has no idea why she hadn’t kicked him out the minute he showed up here, knowing what she knew. One careless blow, and he’d nearly killed her, and he’d rambled on about loving the hell out of her and her son and being an amazing dad but he’s just as much of a menace as he always was; dressing that up with long, flowery speeches and naïve promises doesn’t change what he is, the chemical makeup of his being. The cancer that is him.

Maybe this is his fate: to love her and only ever be capable of hurting her. To know that every second he’s around her could be her death. He’d tried. He was trying. He was trying so hard and it hadn’t mattered, and any logical person would be afraid of him, but here Laurel is, kneeling before him without fear when _he_ should be the one kneeling before _her_ , begging on his knees like a dog for forgiveness.

“I told her not to,” she murmurs. “I knew what it would do to you.”

“I’m sorry,” is all he can manage, those two measly words, so far from enough he can barely stand to hear himself say them. He sniffs, running a hand over his face, still avoiding her eyes. “I’m sorry, I-”

She’s shaking her head, he realizes. There’s fire in her eyes, sudden razor-like determination, and she’s shaking her head. “Frank, it wa-”

“I hurt you.” He sucks in a breath, staring at his clasped hands, and in the dark they look warped, monstrous. His voice is small, like a child’s. He feels like a child before her. “I hurt you, Laurel, and I hurt him-”

“Look at me,” she orders, and when he doesn’t obey she raises her voice. “ _Look_ at me.” He drags his eyes up to hers, reluctantly, and finds her staring at him evenly, the set of her jaw firm. “You didn’t mean to hurt me. You… you would never hurt me, Frank, or him-”

“Maybe I didn’t wanna. But I did, anyway. Don’t matter if it was an accident.” He lets out a breath, crumpling with it as the air leaves his lungs. “You almost died ‘cause of me. And him – fuck, he almost died ‘cause of me too, he-”

Her voice is more insistent, now. “ _Frank_ -”

But he doesn’t listen. He keeps going, tears dripping from his cheeks, crying like a child, and he feels like a child, and he _is_ a child, right then, to her, helpless and lost, burning with love for her  as powerful as the hatred he feels toward himself.

“When I saw ‘im, that first time. When you were out, and they’d just brought him in, and he was in that incubator, had all those tubes all over him. It was-” He swallows. “It was like lookin’ right at you, he was so damn perfect. Looked at him and all I saw was you. I knew he wasn’t mine; I could see it, but I didn’t care, I knew… that you an’ me an’ him, we’d be okay. I loved him ‘cause I loved you. And he had that tube down his throat and all these wires in ‘im, and-” He has to stop to catch his breath, calm himself before a wave of panic can suck him under. “That was ‘cause of me, him bein’ in there. It was my fault.”

None of what he’s saying is coherent, makes much sense, and he knows that. He thinks he can see tears in Laurel’s eyes too, now, but he continues before she can open her mouth to interrupt him, the words bubbling over and out of him like water out of a pan.

“I didn’t feel it, hittin’ you. I didn’t even notice, I-” A rough, jagged sob slices through him, splits him clean in half with the force of it. “I hurt you. I hurt you so bad-”

“ _Stop it_.”

Hands on his cheeks, then. Her gentle touch. She’s reached up, cupping both his cheeks in her palms and tilting his head up so that he has no choice but to look her in the eyes, and it’s fucking excruciating, the worst torture he’s ever known, to be forced to look her in the eyes knowing what he’s done to her and have nowhere to hide. And yet against all odds, all logic and reason, there’s nothing about her that indicates fear. Nothing that indicates anger. It hardly seems to matter to her at all.

She’s not safe. She’s not safe around him, why the fuck doesn’t she _realize_ -

“Stop,” she repeats, voice quivering with emotion. He can feel a subtle tremor beneath her skin, originating in the very deepest parts of her, vibrating her muscles and tendons and bones like she’s being buffeted by some unseen wind. She sniffs, and he can see the tracks of her tears in the light of the moon, blue and silver, almost metallic, forged from fire. Strong as steel. She’s so strong. “ _Stop_.”

He’s stunned, for a moment, by the vehemence in her words – but he can’t stop. Now that he’s begun talking he can’t seem to stop, the stop pulled from his throat and all the words behind it flooding out.

“Tell me to go,” he says, finally. A layer of numbness settles over him. “Leave you and him alone. Never come back. Please.” He’s begging her, now. He’s the one truly on his knees. “Please tell me to go.”

Let him go. He’s begging her to. To do that, grant him permission, because without it he’s doomed to stay. He’ll never leave her, and she knows that, and she would be doing what’s best for herself, what’s best for her son if she sent him away, banished him from her life; God knows she has no reason to keep him here. He loves her hopelessly, but what good will that do if his love is as good as a knife in her stomach, hands around her throat.

“When all this’s over,” Frank says, voice thick, broken. “And you got ‘im back. And you don’t need me around here, anymore. I’ll go.” He’s dimly aware of her hands grasping at his, swallowing something he thinks might be a sob, yet there’s a sort of serenity that comes over him, twisted acceptance. “That’s the one good thing I can still do for you an’ him.”

“No,” she bites out, so sharply he flinches. “No, it’s not.”

He blinks. “Laurel…”

“You _wouldn’t_ ,” Laurel hisses, rising somewhat so that her face is level with his, “hurt me. Or him. Do you understand?”

She’s talking like it matters. Like he has a choice whether or not he hurts them, when it’s abundantly fucking clear he doesn’t. The simple fact of his presence puts them in danger. She doesn’t see. She doesn’t get it – and now she’s looking at him like _he’s_ the one who doesn’t get it.

“I-” he starts, but she won’t hear it.

“What happened was an accident. An _accident_. I know you didn’t mean to. I know-” Her voice hitches. She looks close to breaking, too, though she’s holding herself together remarkably well, with this fierce, unassailable conviction in her every word that stuns him into stillness. “I know you would never hurt me, Frank. And you’d never hurt him. I know that.”

The fact that she’s consoling him – it’s so unbelievably goddamn backwards, after the hell she’s been put through these last few days. She wanted to protect him from the truth, even knowing what he’d done, and she’s looking at him now not as if he’s a monster but as if she can see something in him he can’t ever even imagine could exist. Something he _can’t_ see.

“I don’t-” His voice scrapes his throat roughly. “I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“You won’t,” she says, again, and he can hear in her voice that she believes it with every part of her. She has so much more faith in him than anyone ever should. Before he knows it, she’s moving herself up further, pressing her forehead against his as if to anchor him with the physical reality of her body, the warmth of her skin, the thud of her heartbeat. “You won’t, Frank, you would never hurt me. Either of us.”

She runs her hand up and down the length of one of his forearms, and before he can help it he’s leaning his weight into her, crumbling like a pillar. One of his arms encircles her, clutching her against him, almost as if to reassure himself that she’s there, that she’s real, alive and breathing. That he didn’t hurt her. She trusts him not to hurt her, trusts him with herself and her son, her everything, and he has no goddamn idea why, but he knows right then he’ll spend his every waking moment trying to prove himself worthy – even if he knows he won’t ever be.

“You love me. And you love him,” she soothes, letting him bury his face into her hair, breathe her into his lungs. He’s holding her so tight he’s no longer sure where the boundaries between them are, if they exist at all. “You’d never hurt us.”

She believes it, that much is clear. And he doesn’t, not fully. Not yet. But she’s there, and she’s holding him like a child, letting him fall to pieces against her, and he knows he’s already on his way there, because if Laurel believes-

If Laurel believes. If she believes, he can believe, too.


End file.
